Recientemente, la Gran Sala del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos ha resuelto que la presencia del crucifijo
en las aulas italianas no supone una vulneración del derecho de los padres a asegurar la educación de sus hijos de
conformidad con sus propias creencias religiosas y de los deberes de neutralidad e imparcialidad estatal impuestos
por el derecho de libertad religiosa. Con ello revocaba una decisión en sentido contrario de una Sala de la Sección
Segunda del propio tribunal. En el trabajo se repasan críticamente los fundamentos de la decisión definitiva,
basada principalmente en el reconocimiento de un amplio margen de discrecionalidad en la actuación de las
autoridades nacionales, y se muestran las incoherencias con algunas decisiones previas del propio tribunal.; Recently, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the presence of the crucifix in
the classrooms of Italian publicly run schools does not involve a violation of the parent’s right to ensure their
children’s education and teaching in conformity with their own religious beliefs and does not infringe the State
duty of neutrality and impartiality imposed by the right of religious freedom. This decision reversed another one in
the opposite direction delivered of a Chamber of the Second Section of the same Court. This work examines
critically the foundations of the definitive decision...

[Resumen] La regulación de las relaciones entre Estado y Religión –y en concreto el status
de ésta en la escuela pública- diverge mucho de unos Estados europeos a otros. Los
principios fundamentales que rigen dicha relación no son siempre los mismos. Las dife-
rencias obedecen a razones de tipo histórico y, sobre todo, sociológico, relativas a la
composición religiosa de la población. En este trabajo se examina la forma en que se
plantean y resuelven los conflictos derivados del ejercicio del derecho de libertad reli-
giosa en el ámbito escolar en dos sistemas constitucionales diferentes: el alemán y el
francés; [Abstract] The regulation of the relation between the State and the Church, in the topic of
the public school, is very different in the States of the European Union. The historical
condition and the religious composition of the society, determines the fundamental prin-
ciples of every regulation. The aim of this work is to examine the origin and the reso-
lution of the conflicts derived from the exercise of the religious freedom right in the
constitutional system of France and Germany.

The use of Islamic veil for girls in public schools of France has aroused animportant discussion about laicism, multiculturalism and religious freedom.This debate was under the scrutiny of the European Court of HumanRights, which issued several judgments about the problem. The requirementof neutrality, the fundamental principle of laicism, allows that theState, supposing to protect the freedom of conscience of no religious people,confines the exercise of religious freedom to the strict boundaries ofprivate life. At the same time, while requiring neutrality, the State is tryingto impose in the public arena a sort of civil religion, depriving of the rightof expression in religion matters. These two elements could be found notonly in the fathers and current thinkers of laicism, but in authors that,without this enrollment, are finally supporting the same conclusions. Theprincipal mistake that is under that is a conception of freedom derived fromthe Illustrated liberalism, an error that in the end is derived of a limitedconception of the man. The pretensions of these doctrines are impossibleto perform, because the religion cannot be relegated to the interior of manwithout to force the freedom itself. If some States continue following theseideas...

El derecho a la libertad religiosa de cada individuo tiene su fundamento en la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos y no puede seguir siendo cuestionada. Con base en esta premisa, este artículo trata de la libertad religiosa y la igualdad, presentando en primer lugar la religión como un hecho histórico, libre de cualquier dogma y, en segundo lugar, un análisis de los derechos humanos y culturales, tomando como ejemplo la violación del derecho a la libertad religiosa en las comunidades nativas mayas. //// The right to religious liberty that every individual has is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can no longer be questioned. Based on this premise, this article deals with religious liberty and equality, presenting in the first place religion as a historical fact, free from any dogma, and in the second place an analysis of human rights and cultural rights, taking the violation of the right to religious liberty in native mayan communities as an example.